Times change, but community still responds

Believe me when I say the last thing I wanted to do was write about me or my childhood two weeks in a row. So, I'll ask for your indulgence.

Like most people in the Chicago area, I have been closely following the story of 10-year-old Tionda Bradley and her 3-year-old sister, Diamond, who have been missing since July 6.

The story has been one of the most wrenching missing persons cases in recent years because not one but two young children seem to have vanished without a trace.

For more than a week, scores of regular folk, along with Chicago police officers, FBI agents and Cook County sheriff's deputies, have combed the North Kenwood-Oakland area and beyond in a frantic search that has revealed little.

When I first heard about this story, it had particular resonance for me because I grew up about a half mile from Lake Grove Village, where the two girls live.

I graduated from Doolittle Elementary School, where Tionda was enrolled and had failed to attend a summer school class the Friday she and her sister were reported missing.

I used to spend my lunch breaks in the apartment of a girlfriend who lived in Lake Grove Village in the same building where the Bradley family lives.

Since the girls disappeared, residents have held nightly candlelight vigils, praying for their safe return.

Last week, I drove to the apartment complex, and it was like returning to the old neighborhood. Only this time, it was for the grimmest of reasons.

The area has undergone many changes. Several high-rises in the nearby Ida B. Wells housing development have been demolished.

You can stand near the intersection of 35th Street and Cottage Grove Avenue, Lake Grove's northwestern-most corner, and see the steep upper bleachers of the new and improved Comiskey Park about a mile and a half to the west.

And Lake Grove Village itself, which is still tree-lined and clean, now has a tall wrought-iron fence around the roughly 1-acre development for security purposes.

These days, the buildings sport fliers with Tionda's and Diamond's faces looking out, along with descriptions of both girls.

Residents say that ordinarily this time of year, children and teenagers would be romping around the grounds in full throttle long after dusk, chasing fireflies and listening to loud music.

But now at nightfall, when the investigators' ranks have thinned and the media crews take off, Lake Grove Village is transformed into a little ghost town.

"We're afraid," said resident Dawn Allen, who has two sons and has been at the forefront of the search for the girls. "We don't know if some lunatic has snatched these kids. We're a very close community and we're all being very cautious."

Across Cottage Grove Avenue at Doolittle Elementary School, a truant officer said he would see Tionda daily, walking to and from school. He said he called her Little Bradley and would wave at her. Smiling, she'd always wave back.

Down the street, at the Lake Meadows Shopping Center, a fast-food restaurant occupies the space where my family used to take our dry cleaning.

A worker, who was standing behind bulletproof Plexiglas and constructing a submarine sandwich, said he, too, remembers Tionda. He said she would come into the store with her girlfriends and play with the pop machine as many of the neighborhood children do, or just hang out, passing time.

Indeed, times have changed in this neighborhood. Buildings have been torn down. People have moved on. But Tionda's and Diamond's disappearance illustrates what has remained constant in this community and many others: When children are in need, residents marshal resources and band together.

Last week, police and FBI agents dug up two possible gravesites in the Dan Ryan Woods in search of the sisters.

Investigators hoped that an image of two young girls captured by a surveillance video at a nearby Jewel store would shed some light on the case.

Then there were the two mounds of dirt in a long-abandoned church called New Hope House of Prayer that turned out to be simply that, dirt.